


Leaves in the Trees

by tiredRobin



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: But only a little, Gen, Jack is Nearsighted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 23:32:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13200927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredRobin/pseuds/tiredRobin
Summary: Jack is nearsighted, enough that eventually—perhaps just a few years too late—the other Guardians notice.North chooses to remedy this.





	Leaves in the Trees

**Author's Note:**

> jack squints pretty frequently in the movie and i KNOW it's because he's doing his adorable squinty-eyed smile but the very first time i watched it i had only recently gotten my glasses and i remember thinking in the theaters, "maybe he's nearsighted like me?" so like
> 
> jabs a finger at this. i wrote it in forty-ish minutes in a mobile chat with my df because we were talking about it. i skimmed it over a few times for mistakes and fixed what ones i spotted but there might be some that i missed, so! 
> 
> enjoy. winks

North gets him the glasses because he’s the most equipped to do it of all the Guardians. He does not wrap the case but he does attach a little bow to it, and he presents it with the other three Guardians there to witness. They are in the forest near Jack’s lake, at Toothiana’s insistence, and North has an inkling as to why.

Jack takes one look at it and laughs. “For me?” he asks, coy and amused at North’s nod. “What’s the occasion?”

“No need for occasion,” North reassures. “Glasses good for eyesight, no?”

“Hate to break it to ya, North,” Jack quips readily, “but my eyes haven’t gotten worse in three hundred years. Glasses are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ for them.” But he reaches for the proffered gift, and North pretends not to notice how Jack hesitates just a moment too long before he finally closes his hand around the case. “Hope you got it in a good style,” Jack jokes. “Wouldn’t want to break your heart when I never wear them if they mess with my look.”

“Open it,” is North’s only reply.

Jack pops open the case.

The glasses are simple enough, though expertly crafted—black-rimmed, the frames smooth and plastic, thin. Jack does not know it but they are shaped so that they are far less likely fall off when he goes tumbling through the air in reckless flight; North thinks such a gift would be useless if Jack broke or lost them in his first takeoff, after all. The glass itself is reinforced with what magic North managed to work in with his fingers, a precaution made with Jack’s carelessness in mind.

Jack lifts them from the case and turns them over in his hand, and for a brief moment he looks a little lost. For a brief moment he holds them like they might break, or like they might suddenly be taken from him. For just a brief moment he is uncertain, for his eye might be untrained but he recognizes quality when it is presented to him, and something in him wavers at accepting a gift with such clear worth.

But that moment is there in a heartbeat and is gone in a blink when Toothiana speaks. “Put them on,” she prompts with a waiting, knowing smile.

“You’re making a show of this,” Jack grins back. He does not shift uneasily beneath their stares as he often does when they all focus on him; his mood is too light, for once, and North suspects it is because he is in a familiar element.

“Of course we are!” North booms. “I must know if you like!”

“Quit stallin’, Frostbite,” Aster says with a challenge in his voice.

That does the trick. With a snort in Aster’s direction and without much fanfare, Jack opens the temples and puts on the glasses.

There is a still moment as they all wait.

Jack blinks a few times, looking just a little unbalanced. A second later his eyes focus properly; he studies first the ground, and then his gaze lifts and settles on the fur of North’s coat; they raise higher, then, to the tree leaves above, and that is when he blooms like a flower unfurling beneath the sun with a pleasantly startled smile.

“The leaves!” he exclaims, and his laugh is (to Aster) dewdrops sparkling in the grass at dawn. He is twisting around to study other trees, gaze locked on the canopies, and he points broadly with his crook, “I can see them from here!” and he laughs again.

Toothiana is giggling gleefully, having gotten from this exactly what she had hoped for; Aster doesn’t bite back his grin, couldn’t even if he wanted to. Sanderson claps his hands together silently in clear joy. North laughs too, loud and booming, and he lifts a hand to clap on Jack’s shoulder before catching himself and letting it drop. Jack, turned away to marvel at this newfound ability to see the individual leaves of trees from thirty, forty, fifty feet away, does not notice.

He takes a few steps around, nearly floating with how he walks, head turning eagerly too and fro with an enthusiasm that Aster finds himself chuckling at. When Jack turns back to the others he is smiling ear to ear, teeth catching briefly the sunlight. “You jerks!” he crows. “I didn’t realize what I was missing out on!”

“Whoa, why are _we_ jerks?” Aster asks as though he’s taken offense, but he’s still smiling. “Ain’t we the ones who got ya yer glasses?”

Jack comes back in close enough to lightly punch Aster in the arm and near enough to nudge Sanderson with an elbow. “You’re jerks ‘cuz you guys can see better than me,” he says like it makes perfect sense.

Aster sputters at that, snaps that it’s not like they can control it, Jack, ya gumby, and it is Jack’s turn to act offended and he claims that they’ve been holding out on him for far too long. Something in North’s chest unsettles a bit at that, but it is slight and the words are said in jest, not with accusation, and this is not a moment to ruin with regrets. So—now that Jack can see it coming—he claps Jck on the shoulder. “Do you like?” he asks.

Jack tries for a moment to feign indifference, schooling his expression to something less manic with obvious glee. “Eh,” he shrugs, “they’re alright.”

“Only alright?” North raises an amused eyebrow. “Perhaps you do not need them, then,” and he exaggeratedly makes as if to take them back.

“Wait, no!” Jack darts back, laughing, crook raising to ward off North’s questing hand. “It’s too late, old man, you already gave them to me! They’re mine now.”

“But you said—“ Tooth begins teasingly.

Jack shushes her loudly, and then shushes Sanderson when the spirit starts forming golden symbols over his head. “Nope,” he insists firmly, “doesn’t matter what I said, you probably heard me wrong and anyways I own these now.”

“Yes,” North agrees, “yes, you do,” and Jack’s answering smile warms him to the core.

**Author's Note:**

> hey! thank you for reading! i really hope you enjoyed. leave a kudos if you feel so inclined, and don't be afraid to drop some critique! hope you have a delightful day sometime soon.


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